In Activate the Three Artefacts and then Leave, players are left without character; without avatar. Even in traditional first-person-shooters where the avatar is not necessarily shown at every opportunity, there’s a sense of the body: glimpses in mirrors that reveal a self, a gun peeking into view as an extension of the hand, or movement that is defined by running, walking, and jumping. Artefacts instead exists solely in a space designed for the player, the person at his or her computer. It strips away the artifice of a designed world, of character, of setting, or of plot, and instead, like a math problem, is a task designed for completion, one contained within its title.

It proves to be similar to a constructed toy: a Rubik’s cube, or a disentanglement puzzle (where two interlocked pieces must be made single). In simplicity, Artefacts is, like these, a parlor game: an object whose goal seems to be defined by its physical presence. With its goal laid bare, there is no universe at stake; there is no character needing rescue. There is only the player; there is only the object.

And it’s both maddening and relaxing at the same time. As far as games go, it’s relatively simple: the player moves at a slow, deliberate pace through three-dimensional space. Where in most first-person games one might walk or run, here you float in space, as though you were a calm, digital fly, surrounded only by an infinite, white space, its only inhabitant a massive globe of polygons. Move toward it and an entrance is revealed, a small hole not unlike the exhaust port on the Death Star. But instead of a large planet of pipes, metals, and clones, Artefacts’ planet is made entirely of whitespace and black lines, a simplicity that comes together to form a great construction of geometric off-shapes, their corners never really touching at right angles, their walls never really indistinguishable upon exploration.

This is the main conceit of the game: one’s eyes are practically useless, and it doesn’t really set in until too late. I had just entered the great orb when I turned around and realized that the entrance would need to be an exit, and the great expanse of outer-white had blended into the same white surfaces that made up the walls which now contained me. After a panicky five minutes of bumping into every surface available, I found it, but realized it did not matter—I had to continue deeper. Deeper through great halls of jagged edges filled with floating boxes, their edges seemingly impossible. But the player isn’t meant to navigate by sight; the player is meant to navigate by sound.

There’s a secret area in the game Limbo—a moody and atmospheric platformer defined by a stark, deadly world of children portrayed in blacks and grays—that is entirely dark. The only visual cues there are the two white orbs that are the bright, scared eyes of the protagonist. While in the majority of the game, the player guides him (and his eyes) safely away from obstacles such as sawblades or giant, nightmarish spiders by visuals—in the same way one plays a Mario game—this stage is entirely unseen. Here, to avoid a sawblade isn’t to jump over its sharp, rotating edges, it is to jump over its sound—the caustic, cutting hum as it moves from right to left across the stage. It’s a lovely twist that subverts the dominant strategy of not only the game, but the visual medium, and moves a different sense—hearing—to the forefront of the experience.

Artefacts accomplishes the same not by putting the player in the darkness, but by offering a world that features no real features. In the same way James Turrell’s pieces (such as Wide Out) play with perspective and a sense of space by subverting corners and joints, Artefacts does the same by offering so many of them. It’s not an absence of walls; it’s an abundance. And while sight is necessary to discover rooms and float about, getting lost isn’t just easy, it’s nigh unavoidable: the jaggy sphere is massive, continually unknown. You might recognize the same set piece, but there are no visual bearings.

There are, however, audial ones. Depending on where the player is in the great sphere, they’ll find themselves immersed in great pools of noise: statics, whites, pinks. It’s a quick and obvious realization that in order to navigate in any real way, one has to be paying attention with their ears more than their eyes: to distinguish between a pure white noise, or a white noise blended with a gentle static, or the same static on its own, tiny crackles forming a recognizable beat that echoes within the skull.

After you find an Artefact—a gently floating object that stands out easily among the geometric sphere-scape—light, calming hues of color finally pop into being, only if to let you know that you’ve activated it, that you’ve taken a step towards the completion. It might seem like the only friendly system in an otherwise nightmarish world, but it’s not. It’s the statics that want to help bring you home, navigate the quadrants of a great, imperceptible object whose joints are needles against the eye, against spatial perception. They fill in like voices aware that they aren’t saying anything, but still screaming as a constant landmark in a giant shape that seems to shift and catch you in a circle again and again. They’re this strange, white world’s equivalent of a street sign, or a friendly local pointing in the direction of a tourist attraction. Only here, you can’t just look; you need to listen.

When 140Â begins, youâ€™re dropped into near silence. A single tone plays: low and bassy, it seems to emanate from the flat, monochromatic setting of the world. Your avatar is a lone recognizable shape: an unmoving square. Move to the left or right and transform into a circle; or jump into the air, turning briefly into a triangle before landing.

140â€™s protagonist-shape is instantly familiar, because itâ€™s derived from a universal visual language. Those gentle geometric shapes are the stuff of childhood learning, the foundational building blocks of concepts such as color recognition, addition, and geometry. The square, rectangle, and triangle are a mark of simplicity, their functions instantly recognizable in motion.

Whatâ€™s wonderful about 140 is that every component of the game is at itsÂ most basic, most recognizable. The colors are just as sparse as the landscape, a single-color expanse thatâ€™s all right angles save for the occasional circle. Whatever origin the gameâ€™s character came from, the world came with it.

In the Nintendo classic, Super Mario Bros., numerous pits and enemies roll across the screen at a somewhat uneven pace. The game is a pillar of the platforming genre it helped popularize. Platformers are the side-scrolling titles that defined early consoles, where a 2-dimensional protagonist such as Mario, Sonic, or 140â€™s shape runs and jumps between obstacles and platforms. Â But though the game is legendary, it can be unforgiving, confusing, and ultimately, frustrating, especially in a modern context.

While modern games are usually prefaced with in-depth tutorials requiring memorization of a vast button- or combo-system (and sometimes to the detriment of ease),Â Super Mario Bros.Â suffers from a lack of explanation. The only way to become good at the game is learning its game-design language, usually by trying, failing, and tryingÂ again until you succeed. Such as it is, itâ€™s somewhat difficult to get into without the determination of a child, applied in full force.

This is, in part, due to expectations about difficulty. Early video games were the stuff of quarter-gobbling nightmares, an intersection between entertainment and commerce. Looking back, most games from the era seem to be defined by external forces, external expectations: we should expect games to be hard; we should expect ourselves to adapt on our own time, determine the gameâ€™s world as an adversary, and conquer games such as Mario from within ourselves.

Mario and 140 certainly share a skeleton. Their challenges are similar ones, of jumping over pits and obstacles. And while both are without explanatory text, in Mario, this feels like a technological oversight. In 140, however, it feels purposeful; the game relies on no textual explanation. Like its shapes, the gameâ€™s instructions are spoken in a language thatâ€™s universal, that we’ve all known our entire lives: music. Where there might have been lengthy tutorials, planted signposts explaining mechanics, thereâ€™s instead narrative silence. Thereâ€™s no princess to rescue in 140â€”thereâ€™s just a song that wants to be complete. And the game is tuned entirely around creating the feeling that the player should feel invited.

140â€™s title is derived, presumably, from the BPM of gameâ€™s ever-present soundtrack. As the player progresses through 140, theyâ€™re treated to an ever-growing blend of electronic music. While the entry of the game is a low rumble, the introduction of the gameâ€™s first challengeâ€”a moving platformâ€”adds a rhythmic thrum, and each subsequent challenge increases not only in difficulty, but in musical complexity. By the end of each section, the soundtrack is varied, and as it pulses, the background of 140â€™s world pulses with it, as though it were an overly-reductive music visualizer.

Though the player and her shape are dropped into a world of visual and audio silence, the player progresses naturally into a world filled with vibrant color and sound. The playerâ€™s goal is to seek out a dual-colored circle that floats, and when touched, follows you. But the disc also emanates a sound pattern, as though it were calling out sonar, asking you to come get it. And when you do, you take it to another circular pattern embedded in the world, at which point the disc jumps directly into it, drawn by certain magnetism.

At this, the world explodes. Color erupts, painting you, the land, and the background in new, effervescent colors, and the music, previously a lilting silence or dull drone, turns into a celebratory ecstasy.

The landscape changes, too. Where platforms were once stationary, they now move on fixed lines, ski-lifts taking you to previously unobtainable heights. And every round they make, a familiar noise occurs, a component of the now thriving soundtrack that signals timing to player. And in the background, a beat acts as a metronome for your action, counts the moments before you need to jump.

Death in video games is usually met with a loss of lengthy process, or a dwindling of your â€œlives,â€ a holdover from the arcade days of tokens, or quarters. Lose them all, and the penalty is usually grave, can sometimes result in a loss of all forward progress.

140 has no lives, and true to its nature, checkpoints are common. These are tiny beacons of light that shoot skyward when you touch them, celebrating your progress. The music momentarily hits a filter as you falter, plunging into static after mistiming a jump. But when you return to that point, the beat of the soundtrack is there, timing the obstacles for you, for as long as you might need to internalize it.

Later, as the challenges and music build further, greater obstacles are encountered. Pits of static which ostensibly â€œkillâ€ you send you back to a previous point, although the length of loss is generally minor. Blocks shift back and forth, disappear and appear in time, or expand and contract. Floors glow and bounce you into the air. Itâ€™s all incredibly joyful, even more so because it all serves to underline a distinct, obvious fact about 140: above all, it wants you to succeed.

In one of PC gamingâ€™s most famous series, Half-Life, players take on the role of Gordon Freeman.Â Across numerous games, the Half-Life series sees its hero traipse through dangerous environments, mostly as a result of an initial scientific accident that calls forth alien hordes. Throughout all this, Gordon is an obvious example of the â€œsilent protagonist.â€ The silent protagonist is one who, quite literally, remains silent. Even in conversation with another character or the face of apparent death, Freeman makes no sounds.

The opening sequence of Half-Life is famous for an engaging establishment of its environment. The player, as Freeman, is transported via a futuristic railcar to a desert facility named Black Mesa, an amalgamation of shadowy government experimentation. As Freeman, the player takes in vague sights and listens to the monotonous drone of a pre-recorded speech extolling safety procedures. The first character Gordon Freeman interactsâ€”and I use the term looselyâ€”with is a security guard. The guard, upon opening the railcar door, greets him: â€œMorning Mr. Freeman. Looks like youâ€™re running late.â€

This bit of dialogue is one of a small collection of identifying information about Gordon, but ultimately, it doesnâ€™t reveal much. All the player knows is that he has a prior line of history and existence with this facility. In essence, the player knows he is returning to his day job. The comment is an allusion to this characterâ€™s constant existence, his place in the gameâ€™s narrative.

In games, characters, narratives, and environments are essentially defined through two aspects. The first is that which already exists, coloring the history and environments that define the in-game world and people within it. The second is that which colors the player-characterâ€™s present, which is intrinsically tied to the gameâ€™s actionâ€”essentially what we as players see and experience. A more important distinction between the two is that the history and narrative are defined by the developer or creator, while the present of the game and the characterâ€™s present, is defined by the player and his or her actions.

As he is silent, Gordonâ€™s interactions with other characters are defined solely by the dialogue and intent of those that interact with him. Freeman meets a variety of characters on his journey through the games, and some even develop close relationships with him. Just as the security guardâ€™s comment solidified his history as a scientist, those interactions which occur during the actual game fill out his nature as perceived by both the characters around him, and the environment in which they existâ€”all as predicated by the developer. Developer-dictated detail and narrative is that which the player cannot affect, but only know and learn passively.

This is the opposite of that narrative detail which is defined by action, and as a result, the player. A large part of what begins to define the character relies upon and is determined by player actionâ€”and this action sometimes occurs in direct opposition to character history.

When a player plays as an established heroâ€”say, Batmanâ€”the action that occurs during the player-defined portion is usually entirely in agreement with that characterâ€™s history. That is, when a player controls Batman and beats up a gang of thugs, this action is fully in line with what players expect from Batmanâ€™s colorful and storied history. His historical, developer-defined narrative transitions seamlessly into the player-defined action.

Whatâ€™s perhaps most odd about Gordon Freeman is though his established history is scarce, what shines through results in direct opposition with his player-controlled present. Gordonâ€™s day job is that of a theoretical physicist. His physicalityâ€”prominently displayed only on some editions of the box art, in the gameâ€™s menu, and briefly during spin-off gamesâ€”paints him as an obvious ectomorph. Yet his player-defined narrative has him leaping over pools of caustic acid, wielding numerous firearms with incredible accuracy, and dispatching hordes of aliens and marines alike.

This isn’t an argument that the game should have been a scientist simulatorâ€”one that, given the events of the game, would have probably ended in premature death or hiding in a reinforced closet. But the developer-defined aspects of Freeman as a characterâ€”his history and his relationshipsâ€”donâ€™t come together with the player-driven narrative to create a complete, acceptable portrait. And when this happens, the relationship between the protagonist and player is not as fulfilling. Rather than portraying Freeman, the player is portraying a fantasy, and Freeman is merely a replaceable vessel.

This year saw the release of The Fullbright Companyâ€™s Gone Home. Much has been written about Gone Home, and for good reasonâ€”the game deals eagerly with a non-violent plot and consists of relatable family life complete with uncomfortable discovery, a 1995 setting with a Riot Grrl soundtrack, and celebration of sexual identity.

But in addition to thatâ€”which alone makes the game worth exploring, ten times overâ€”it offers a refreshing version of the player-defined narrative, one that creates a unique relationship between player, protagonist, and environment. One of the geniuses of Gone Home is that its environment is not only entirely unknown to its player, but that its environment is also entirely unknown to its protagonist. The protagonist, Kaitlin (or Katie) is an elder daughter returning from an extended overseas trip. In the meantime, her family (a father, mother, and younger sister) have moved into a house willed to them from the fatherâ€™s estranged uncle. Her return finds the house empty, leaving her and the player without a guide or character with which to interact.

This single aspect defines the environment an exciting way: one that is entirely unknown to both the player and the protagonist. This allows for the player to more closely identify with Katie as a protagonist, sharpening the relationship. And when the relationship is a closer one, the player-driven action becomes more relevant in moving towards meaningfully defining a character and world.

Gone Home is essentially a story about relationships, told via intelligent discovery and modern archaeology. As the player-as-Katie moves through the home, mysteries unfold via papers left out. Notes from Katieâ€™s younger sister Sam provide the central narrative, while crumpled notes, pamphlets, and other documents fill out the mother and father in addition.

Whatâ€™s interesting about Gone Home isnâ€™t just the unified developer-defined narrative, but the narrative that develops as defined through the playerâ€™s action. Rather than shooting aliens or (gleefully) breaking crates as in Half-Life, Gone Homeâ€™s interactivity is defined by searching and discovering. While the playerâ€™s actions on a most basic level defines Kaitlin as a snoop without any sort of respect for boundaries, they, perhaps more importantly, serve to define the environment around them. Much of the gameâ€™s content is bound up in secrecy, waiting to be unleashed, and only with careful searching does the world come into focus.

Historicallyâ€”and in games such as Half-Lifeâ€”the environment and the characters within it are developer-defined, and as a result, the protagonistâ€™s history is as well. But in Gone Home, the lack of external characters ultimately means a lack of active developer-driven meaning, and instead the player finds something that feels more personal.

And while of course, all of the content in Gone Home has been placed there by the developerâ€”they are still the writer and creator of the game, after allâ€”the playerâ€™s action is what actually serves as the access point. Though the player in most games propels the action simply by playingâ€”in the same way a reader reveals the action by readingâ€”the player in Gone Home serves as a more active propellant of the slow reveal of the environment and its characters.

What begins to develop, then, is a picture of Gone Home as a game where the player-as-protagonist is the driving force for the narrative. This is because Gone Homeâ€™s player-action is one that paints a picture of the protagonist and the relationships around her in the exact way the protagonist would on her own. This allows the protagonist, and the resulting player/protagonist relationship, to feel incredibly powerful. Because when the player-as-protagonist defines the narrative or the environment, the player/protagonistâ€™s action defines the way in which that entity interacts with them. In a sense, they become the driving force behind the gameâ€™s emotional impact. When a player-as-protagonist feels as though they have the power to drive forth the narrative, defining the environment and protagonist through their discoveries and actions, gaming as a medium truly shines.

But perhaps more importantly, as the player gains control and the ability to define the narrative through the interactivity of the medium, the developer appears to exert less control. And when the developer wields less control, they fade from the experience of the game, allowing it to stand on its own. While the relationship between the player and the developer is an interesting one (and well worth exploring at another time), they happen to be at direct odds with eitherâ€™s direct relationship to the game and the protagonist. In a sense, the developer must be able to release full control of their creation, their child, to the player, and allow them to determine the protagonistâ€™s existence and relation to the game as a whole.

The sole page of Proteusâ€™ help screen begins â€œMove with WASD. Look around with the mouse.â€

No other controls exist, besides the space bar. Instead of offering a traditional jump, it commands the playerâ€™s avatar to sit, peacefully, for as long as they might. The help screenâ€™s final instructions begin with what seems like half of a warning: â€œEach island is unique, but familiar.â€

To move past the title screen and into the game, you begin by clicking the silhouette of a distant island. After fading, the screen opens from a murky black into a gently disappearing elliptical shape, as though you were slowly opening your eyelids. You’ve awoken in what appears to be an endless ocean, a muted sea-green punctuated by the gentle lapping of white reflections. In the distance, you begin to make out the outline of a shrouded landmass. As you trudge towards it, the only anchor in the gameâ€™s ceaseless sea, you can practically feel the sunlight of the raincoat-yellow orb shining in the sky.

Everything in Proteus is rendered in a blocky, colorful style that should be familiar to everyone whoâ€™s ever seen an early pixelated video game. (Think the â€œballâ€ of pong, or the sharp edges of Mario.) But the style isn’t due to a lack of processing power or graphical method; instead, the worldâ€™s lack of texture translates into a picturesque canvas of flat colors, almost as though you were gazing directly into a visual interpretation of one of Brian Enoâ€™s ambient tracks.

As you climb onto the shores of your island and walk past the flat browns of tree trunks and across the rolling green hills dotted with single-color flowers and blocks representing dandelions, an ambient soundtrack erupts. These are the changing environs and characters, and your interactions with them feel as though they were entirely up to you.

When somebody completes any video game, they tend to have finished a universal experience. Though the person playing it might have preferred a different gun, or tactic, or motorcycle, their journey is usually one shared by all other players. Certain blockbuster titles, usually role-playing games, offer choice and varied game paths as a selling point. There, you might choose to be a thieving elf that sneaks through danger, or a devil-may-care warrior slaying all in your path. Ultimately, however, the same challenges are present.

Proteus doesn’t exactly offer a challenge. There are no tests of dexterity or hand-eye coordination; there is only your movement through and consideration of the world, your journey. Pass by a stone obelisk and hear a great deep bass noise burst and fade slowly into a background of crickets. Chase a frog and hear its hops become the staccato twang of a distant guitar, or reach a mountainous peak above a plateau of raining clouds and listen to an uplifting crescendo.

Some sound origins are obvious. The crickets cricket, and leaves fall like soft glass. Still, there are other tones Iâ€™m uncertain about. Perhaps it was my position on a specific hill, or maybe it was the shadow of a pink-tufted tree.Â Proteusâ€™ soundtrackâ€”a constant soothing orchestration of hidden instrumentsâ€”is only one of the complex machinations behind deceitfully simple visuals.

Each island in Proteus is procedurally generated. Algorithmically, one comes together in a way that is unique, but familiar, placed together by a machine, or equation.

At a certain point, the boxy sun sets and is replaced by the moon. Night arrives, marked by a deep blue and a subdued soundtrack. Slowly, the bright dots of the islandâ€™s airspaceâ€”be they fireflies, wisps, spots of cottonâ€”swirl and gather, until finally, they culminate in a furious whirlwind at the center of a circle of stones. As you approach it, time speeds up. Clouds and stars race above you, the trees around you begin to shudder and dance. The music, now faster, eggs them on. Enter the circle and soon, the screen fades to white, almost as if signaling an end to your time on the island, a quiet release from the frenzied energy. But then island returns, rewarding a patient moment of darkness in the same way a morning welcomes those just stirring from sleep.

The colors have changed slightly, and the music with it. In the air before you dances a swarm of bees. Above you the calm sphere of the sun now has flaring tendrils, shining down harder than before. Vibrant collections of flowers have sprouted up since you walked into the mystical circle of stones and its swirling puffs.

Usually when a game environment transforms, dangers arrive. Night might reveal prowling tigers, shambling zombies, or some spooky other. Proteus remains peaceful, instead signaling the end of its day and condensed season with frenetic motion. Though you act as a catalyst in the seasonal change by entering that swirling circle, you canâ€™t help but feel a small component of a greater cycle;Â a piece in an action that comes from a living, breathing land mass. The whole island, player included, enters a chrysalis and emerges anew.

Often, a gameâ€™s digital world exists solely as a static landscape with one-sided interaction. Usually, it is up to us as individual players to act as the experimental component or the dynamic instrument. But though we, as individuals in a programmed world, might be dynamic, we all fulfill the same role. We are the same cog that fits into a developerâ€™s machine, makes it turn linearly through its universal paces. This tends to result in an identical experience for all who play the same game.

There are pieces of Proteus that hint at an identical experience. You awake in an ocean; you climb ashore a distant island; you swirl through the seasons. But since each island is procedurally generated, no two islands or games will ever truly be the same.

At a certain point during my night in Proteus, a white owl appeared in a tree, staring at me before taking off and flying to the next tree; later, I walked towards the crude ruins of a tower to find myself teleported to another crumbling monument.

I learned later that others retelling their experiences on the gameâ€™s forums had not encountered the owl. Instead, one account was dominated by a dark figure that appeared after the night sky had turned red, only to run off, while making sure the player was following. Some played with constellations; some sat in solemn graveyards. While we had all played Proteus, it became clear that we did not share the same experiences; we all wandered through different worlds, encountering familiar aspects in a unique way.

The main difference between unique play in Proteus and role-playing games is agency. In a massive fantasy or space world, the player is given what appears to be wide path to play how they wish. They move through a static world and sculpt it in a pre-designed fashion. Ultimately, the developers of these games give players the gift of agency, the ability to move through that world and shape it.

This also forces the game to be reliant upon the player. Even if a gameâ€™s narrative is linear, it depends on the player to advance it. For example, a programmed character within a game may walk a programmed path, forever, until a player enters and engages its route. By interacting with that non-player character (NPC), the player has helped it fulfill its destiny, and furthered the action of the world. The expectation is that the world exists at the behest of the player, and the player is often imbued with the power of a god who may alter the world.

While Proteus as a gameâ€”and productâ€” exists for the player, its world isnâ€™t reliant upon a specific player experience. Because it isn’t static, differences occur, many and obviously, around the player. Because the world is produced dynamically, the player must act as a static element with practically no control. And though each player may in turn approach the game in an identical capacity, once the island is generated, it is a fresh, dynamic world each time, reducing the potential for a homogenized experience.

The largest contributor to this success is the way in which Proteus plays with music. The endless cacophony (both aural and visual) that permeates the atmosphere is so incredibly active. As a player explores, animals or flowers donâ€™t change course like an NPC. Instead, they react naturally, not as though they were born for your experience, but almost as if the opposite were true. When you approach an area that produces a sine waveâ€”be it a tree, a slope, or some other mysteryâ€”the feeling isn’t that Proteus or the object in Proteus has begun to play for you, but that the sound, or owl, or structure was always there, and you just happened, through a chance generation, to wander into it. Starting a game of Proteus is not like listening to a pre-recorded album, but like listening to the chaotic throng of generative music. And though you might begin and stop Proteus at will, thereâ€™s no guarantee that the islandâ€™s music will follow.

Paul King is a poet, writer, and video game enthusiast currently living in Chicago, IL. He grew up in Austin, TX and graduated from Bard College with a BA in Liberal and Written Arts.

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This week: Video games. Amanda talking about porn and boobs. People behaving badly. Oh, yeah, some art. It’s after 3 AM.Â I’m tired you aren’t getting a huge, organized note, go and google stuff, you can do it. I am even more nasally than normal in the audio, damned airplane petri dishes.

This is a show for the ages.

JesperÂ JuulÂ is an assistant professor at the New York University Game Center. He has been working with the development of video game theory since the late 1990’s. His publications includeÂ Half-RealÂ on video game theory, andÂ A Casual RevolutionÂ on how puzzle games, music games, and the Nintendo Wii brought video games to a new audience. He maintains the blog The Ludologist on “game research and other important things”. His most recent book isÂ The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of playing Video Games.Â http://www.jesperjuul.net

Oliver Warden (b. 1971, Cleveland, Ohio) is a multidisciplinary artist, working both in the realms of contemporary art and technology. When online, he goes as his avatar name, ROBOTBIGFOOT. The majority of his body of work is inspired by and culled from his experiences in the virtual world, as he spends about 40 hours a week inside the realms of Counter-Strike, Left 4 Dead, and various independent titles. It can be said that Warden essentially, and by 21stÂ Century definition, lives in two worlds: online and off. His paintings, ranging in size of 1 ft to 21 ft canvases, are made by a unique process of pouring Galkyd onto canvas laid horizontally in his Bushwick studio. The semi-transparent and glossy layers build over each other in intricate and elaborate geographies, creating an effects-driven and technologically mediated super-world. HisÂ cameraless-photographyÂ is created on his computer, in virtual spaces. One series that I find especially innovative shows the â€œedge of worldâ€ in the video game Tribes; Warden literally played the game until there were no more challenges or objectives to complete, and after reaching the literal end of the map (where the playable area stops), he took thousands of screen shots. The results are works on paper, presented as pixelated photographs.Â His performance pieces are the third factor of his work, creating a complete balanced and intentional body. Inspired by his interactive experiences, he built a body of work around notions of privacy, voyeurship and control.Â Stalking people in Central Park at midnight and â€œcapturingâ€ them on video, living in a school wall for a week and pulling covert ops at night and sittingÂ insideÂ a chair as unknowing sitters sat on his lap, all challenged and occasionally broke the rules of engagement and participation.